HANNO AND HAMILCAR BARCA.

145

character which it was likely to assume. Hanno was the personal enemy of Hamilcar, and was as incapable as he was self-confident. If he won a partial success, he failed to follow it up. He forgot that he was fighting no longer with nomadic tribes, who after a reverse would fly for three days without intermission, carrying their homes with them, but with men led by the veterans of Hamilcar, who did not know what it was to be defeated, who had learned at Eryx, says Polybius, to renew the combat three times over in a single day, and who would feign a retreat only that they might charge again with irresistible force.1 Deceived by some such simple feint as this, the incompetent Hanno having won, as he thought, a complete victory, allowed his camp to be surprised and taken. The government in its. distress was obliged to apply to Hamilcar, the man whom they had treated so ill in Sicily, and whom they had treated worse still in the persons of his trusted veterans when the war was over.2 But Hamilcar, still placing his country before all else, consented to serve the government which had betrayed him. He induced or compelled the easygoing citizens to enlist, and having got together a force of seventy elephants and ten thousand men, he managed to slip through the armies, which, stationed as they were, one at Utica and the other at Tunis, had almost cut Carthage off from Africa; and then by his strict discipline, by his energy, and by his influence with the Numidian chiefs, especially with one called Naravus, he defeated the enemy in a pitched battle, and overrunning the country, recovered several towns which had revolted, and saved others which were being besieged. Deserters, some of them, doubtless, veterans of his own, came over to his side; the spell of his genius and of their attachment to him overpowering—as in the case of Marshal Ney after Napoleon's escape from Elba -all other obligations, even those of immediate self-interest. Nor was this all. His kind treatment of four thousand of his prisoners of war, some of whom he allowed to enlist in Polyb. i. 74. 7. 3 Polyb. i. 78. I.

I

3

2 Polyb. i. 75. I.

his service, while the rest he dismissed to their homes on their simple promise not to serve against Carthage during the war, was something so unlike anything which the natives had before experienced at the hands of the Carthaginians, that Spendius and Matho, fearing wholesale desertions, determined to cut down their bridges and burn their boats, by involving the whole force in an act of atrocity which not even Hamilcar could forgive.1

Panic is always cruel, and the panic of barbarians, if less culpable, is far more uncontrollable than the panic of civilised men. By a well-laid plan Spendius and Matho contrived to create such a panic. Those who counselled moderation were greeted with the cry of "Treason, treason!" or "Smite him, smite him!" and when in this way-just as in the French Revolution the Girondists fell before the Jacobins, and the more moderate of the Jacobins themselves before the more violent—a reign of terror had been established, the Irreconcilables carried everything their own way. Gisco, "the soldier's friend," lay ready to their hand. He and his company of seven hundred men were led out to execution, and having been cruelly mutilated were thrown, still living, into a ditch to perish. To an embassy from Carthage sent to ask for their bodies, the only answer was a blunt refusal, and a warning that if any more embassies were sent, they should fare as Gisco had fared. Thenceforward all native Carthaginians who fell into their hands would be put to death, while others who did not belong to the hated nation should be sent back to the city with their hands cut off. The mercenaries were as good as their word, and from that day forward the war deserved the name by which it was known in history, the "war without truce," or the "Inexpiable War." 2

Upon its horrors we need not here dwell. The world has been supping so full of horrors of late during the terrible struggle which has devastated some of the fairest countries of Europe and of Asia, that we are not disposed I Polyb. i. 80. 3-9. 2 Polyb. i. 81.

THE TRUCELESS WAR.

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to linger unnecessarily on the atrocities of the Mercenary War. Suffice it to say that IIamilcar was driven to make reprisals for the barbarities of the Libyans by throwing his prisoners to be trampled to death by the elephants, and the war was henceforward, in the literal sense of the word, internecine. The Carthaginian government managed, even in this supreme hour, to thwart Hamilcar by allowing his inveterate enemy Hanno, discredited as he was, to share the command with him. Nor was it till after the quarrels which ensued had led to many reverses; till the news arrived of the total destruction of their own ships in a storm, of the revolt of Hippo Zarytus and of Utica, the towns which alone had been faithful to Carthage in the invasions of Agathocles and Regulus; 1 above all, till the news had come of the insurrection of the mercenaries in Sardinia, and the probable loss of that fair island, that the Carthaginians allowed the voice of the army to be heard, and committed to Hamilcar once again the sole command.

Hamilcar soon penned the Libyans in their fortified camp near Tunis, and so effectually cut them off from all supplies that they were driven to eat first their prisoners and then their slaves; and it was not till they had begun to look wistfully upon one another that some of the chiefs, with Spendius at their head, came forth to ask for the parley which they had themselves forbidden. Hamilcar demanded that ten of the mercenaries, to be named by himself, should be given up, while the rest of the army should be allowed to depart unarmed with one garment each. This having been agreed upon, Hamilcar immediately named Spendius and his fellow-legates, and threw them into chains.2 The rebel army thinking, as well they might, that Hamilcar had been guilty of sharp practice, flew to arms. They were still forty thousand in number, but they were without leaders, and they were exterminated almost to a man. Matho still held out at

1 Polyb. i. 82. 8.

2 Polyb. i. 85.

Tunis, and when Spendius was crucified by Hamilcar in front of its walls, Matho, by a sudden sally on the other side of the town, took a Carthaginian general prisoner, and shortly afterwards crucified him with fifty others on the very spot which had witnessed the last agonies of Spendius. A horrible interchange of barbarities! But we are tempted to remark that they took place two centuries before, and not twenty centuries after, Christ. The army of Matho was soon afterwards cut to pieces. The rebel chief himself was taken prisoner, and, after being led in triumph through the streets of the capital, was put to death with terrible tortures (B.C. 241-238). So ended the Truceless War, after a duration of three years and four months, with the total extermination of those who had made it truceless; "a war," says Polybius, and he says truly, "by far the most cruel and inhuman of which he had ever heard ; " 1 but we are again tempted to remark that he had not seen, or perhaps imagined, such scenes as those at Batak and Kezanlik.

1 Polyb. i. 83. 7.

CONDUCT OF ROMANS.

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CHAPTER IX.

HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN.

(B.C. 238-219.)

Conduct of Romans during Mercenary War-They appropriate Sardinia and Corsica-Peace and war parties at Carthage-Hamilcar's command-He takes Hannibal with him-He crosses to Spain-Advantages of his position there-His administration and death-His character-Administration of Hasdrubal-New Carthage foundedEarly career of Hannibal-His vow and its significance-Remissness of Romans-Rising of Gauls in Italy-Its suppression-Hannibal besieges Saguntum-War declared between Rome and Carthage.

DURING the desperate struggle for life on the part of the Carthaginians which has just been related, the Romans had, on the whole, behaved with moderation, or even with generosity, to their conquered foe. Had it pleased them to make one more effort and once again to risk a Roman army upon African soil, when they were invited to do so by the revolted Uticans and by the mercenaries themselves, there can be little doubt that Carthage would have fallen and that there would have been no Second and no Third Punic War to relate; and had they dreamed of what lay deep hidden in Hamilcar's breast, or of the vast military genius which was being reared amidst those stormy scenes in his infant son, no exertion would have appeared too great to make, and no danger too desperate to dare, even to the cautious Roman Senate. Was it that the exhaustion consequent on the twenty-three years' war was even greater than is commonly supposed, and that the Romans were

Polyb. i. 83. 5.